A/N: An inspiring classic movie and the anticipation of the arrival of Halloween prompted me to dig up this short horror bit I wrote last year and never posted. I didn't actually intend to make this what it turned out to be, or plan on posting it, but I like it and thought I'd share. If you choose to read, I advise taking your time with it. This uses descriptive imagery with hardly any dialogue, so you'll have to pay attention to detail to enjoy the story. Don't skip to the end! That would ruin it.
The sky was starless and cloudless, a black canvas that night.
Yet, an intense wind blew, causing a struggle aboard a traveling cargo ship in the sea. Torrential waves crashed against the hull of the fully manned ship, which was bound for the coast of the nearby continent. The crew fought to right the wavering ship, but it was the unpredictable impacts of the waves against its hull that controlled the ship that night, not the crew.
A crate, which had come loose from its secure fastening onboard, slid violently on deck and pounded against the railing of the ship. The crew members nearest to the crate immediately recognized the anomaly and hurriedly worked to secure their cargo. Others joined in as the crew members struggled to fight an unexpected force pounding from within the crate, while the men were still being thrown around by the merciless rocking of the ship.
A low growl rumbled from within the crate, and the men looked at one another in shocked, deep perplexity.
"Get that crate boarded up!" A sailor shouted out of desperation as the growling from within the crate grew louder.
The man with his hands nearest the opening struggled with all his strength to seal the busted lid over the crate, but the strength emanating from inside the vessel was too strong for him to counter. With a few determined grunts of effort and even the assistance of his nearby crew members, the man still lost his struggle as a pale-skinned hand shot through the opening of the crate, grasping the crewman's leathery-skinned wrist in an iron-clad hold.
The men screamed and yelled, and all but the one who was held immediately jumped or ran from the crate. The wooden lid loudly toppled off the crate from the force of gravity coupled with yet another violent sway of the ship as the man continued screaming and struggling for his life, pulling frantically to loosen his hand from the rock solid grasp of his unknown captor residing beneath the soil in the crate. The heavy lid slid across the deck with a grating screech, followed by a loud bang as it slammed into the crates at the opposite end of the ship.
From within the opened, soil-filled crate, something began to move and displace the soil near the emergence of that marmoreal white hand. The unfortunate captive opened his mouth in a silent scream as bits of soil fell loose from the budding protrusion to reveal impressive, masculine facial features.
Immediately upon being sighted, the monstrous being jerked the man down by his wrist, sinking sharp fangs ferociously into his jugular. The helpless crew mates watched their crying friend's body lose its pallor, being completely drained of blood by the dark and haunting figure from the crate. They panicked and looked around in desperation, fearing whose turn would be next as they had no escape but the suicidal one of diving into the merciless black waters.
Through the night, the symphony of screams from that ship were drowned out by the roar of the crashing waves and the howling of the night winds.
As the light of morning finally approached, the ship neared the coast. With no one manning the ship, it crashed ashore into a cliff of rocks abutting a beach, startling a lightly sleeping young woman to consciousness in a nearby home.
The woman sat up with a start, rubbing the back of her delicate hand against her face with a breathy sigh before turning her gaze towards the window. Her blue eyes shimmered with curiosity as she slowly rose from the bed, her bare feet gently landing on the plush white carpet below. She tiptoed to the window, being careful not to wake the others in the house as the dimness of light from outside informed her that it was still very early. As she pulled the crimson velvet curtain back, she swept a silky blue lock of hair from her eyes with her other hand.
The sight outside the pane-glass window revealed to her the ruins of the cargo ship crash, its chaotic circumstance evident by the pieces of broken wood and at least one victim she readily spotted splayed across the rocks, his lifeless state recognizable even from that distance. Out of a need to help, in case there were any survivors, she sprinted outside, no longer worrying about who she might wake.
As the woman ran at full speed with her bare feet being scratched and marred by twigs, jagged rocks, and other bits of earth below her, she began to hope someone did hear her leave the house.
It became apparent as she closed in on that first corpse that the wreck was not the only cause for the deaths of the crew. She carefully stepped around the bloody body with its eyes lifeless and throat grotesquely ripped to shreds. Her stomach lurched at the body's stench of death mixed with seawater as she hurriedly turned her head away to inspect the rest of the wreckage.
She climbed the rocks and viewed the wreck all the way to the shoreline down below the cliffs. With her white chiffon nightgown dancing in the residual breeze from the previous night's windstorm, the woman shivered at the sight of several more corpses scattered on the sands of the beach, eerie in their absolute stillness.
The only visible movements in the scene below were of the torn sails fluttering in the breeze and the rolling waves of the ocean.
The only sounds were the flapping of the sail fabrics, distant cries of seagulls and the low, rhythmic roar of the gentle ocean waves.
The evidence of the bloody carnage that happened aboard that ship was apparent, scattered around with the wayward cargo crates and broken bits of ship.
The woman released a heavy, shaky sigh as she clutched her hand to her chest, attempting to comprehend how such a fatal crash could come ashore near her home that morning. Just as she was about to turn, she detected a minuscule movement among the wreckage in her peripheral vision.
Without another thought about her own safety or her churning stomach, she instinctively sprinted towards that movement in the wreckage, stopping with panting breath when she neared and identified the subtle twitching of fingers slowly protruding from beneath a broken crate with a name printed across it in black, stenciled ink.
The emotionally shaken woman slowly, timidly reached for the pale hand, which had visible traces of dark soil caked beneath its blunt fingernails. Running her own lithe fingers gently over the more masculine, but still alarmingly beautiful ones of the sole survivor of the wreckage, she sighed with relief upon determining that he was, indeed, alive.
His icy fingers curled firmly but gently around hers as she noted, on the busted crate under which he was temporarily buried, the name printed in black.
Vegeta.
A/N: I plan to expand upon this idea, making each chapter a different horror scenario for each of the canon DBZ couples.